Fake But Accurate!

This feature – a companion to my “Climate of Hate” page that documents the liberal propensity to violence – is a catalog of stories where the media jumped to a big, bad, ugly, and politically correct conclustion – and turned out to be irredeemably wrong.

The Evanovich Shooting: In October, 2010, after robbing and pistol-whipping a 50-something Latina cleaning lady outside a Cub Foods on east Lake street in Minneapolis, Darren Evanovich was followed into a dark alley by a good samaritan, who asked him to return the woman’s purse and money. Evanovich, according to the Minneapolis Police, drew a gun, prompting the samaritan to pull his own handgun, killing Evanovich. Before the actual facts came out, though, the Twin Cities media went on an orgy of presupposition and narrative-mongering, writing touching elegies to Evanovich, attacking the motives of the never-identified shooter, and questioning the wisdom of Minnesota’s carry permit law – up until Henco attorney Mike Freeman called the shooter a hero and essentially arrested a couple of Evanovich’s sisters for a string of other, similar armed robberies.

Fast and Furious: The entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Explosives and Firearms operation was set up to promote a narrative where the law-abiding American gun industry was unwittingly feeding firearms to the narcotraficantes, fueling Mexico’s near-civil-war over drugs, with an intention to whip up fervor for gun control. When it became known that it was not only a set-up, but a set-up gone terribly wrong (leading to the deaths of many innocent and not-so-innocent Mexicans and at least one Border Patrol officer, the media fell silent.

The Pentagon Shooting: On March 5, 2010, John Patrick Bedell shot two Pentagon police officers at a Metro station, before being killed in a hail of police gunfire. The media started to blame anti-Obama sentiment and the Tea Party – it was a bit of a pattern at the time – until it came out that Bedell was in fact another Bush-hating guy with mental health issues. So did the rhetoric of Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz and “ThinkProgress” send this poor fella over the edge? The way Michele Bachmann’s was supposed to have led to Bill Sparkman’s murder…that wasn’t?

Vandalism In Denver: Media reports blamed an $11,000 vandalism spree at the headquarters of the Colorado Democrat party on Tea Partiers – part of the “avalanche of violence” that the lefty-media narrative tried to pin on the Tea Party during that crucial mid-term election year – before it came out that the culprit was actually Maurice Schwenkler – a Democrat activist trying to smear the GOP and the Tea Party. The media quickly turned to covering Bristol Palin again.

The Sparkman Case: Initially, the left jumped up and down and hooted that Bill Sparkman – a part-time teacher and census worker found hanging from a tree in rural Kentucky with anti-government rhetoric scrawled on his chest – was murdered by “anti-government activists” motivated by right-wing pundits (including Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann).It turned out that Sparkmann killed himself. Tragic, to be sure – but it introduces the question “why would a man choose to make his last act on this earth a frame-up of an entire political movement?” Doesn’t it at least make you wonder whose hateful rhetoric was having an affect, here?

Ward Churchill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

The 35W Bridge Collapse: The air from the submerged cars hadn’t finished bubbling to the surface when WCCO Radio carried Representative Alice Hausman